Today we began harvesting our 2012 vintage. The air is charged with not only anticipation but expectation. As not only have we begun bringing in the fruits of our labour, we are now given a further glimpse of what our fruit will go on to be. And we have high expectations for our 2012 wines. What we are seeing throughout the vineyard are point pure expressions of varietal flavour and the all important structural tannin and acid, delivered via our site that is further focused through the lens of the Macedon Ranges.
The higher altitude of our site give us warmer days and cooler nights providing for slower ripening and therefore extra hang time in the vineyard. By that we mean simply that a slow ripening of quality fruit gives time for deeper varietal characters to emerge but not at the expense of acid by sugars ripening too quickly. In towards gaining authentic complexity, there is simply no substitute for this slower development. This is certain for Pinot Noir with it’s thin skinned delicacy, but we feel it’s equally so for our Chardonnay & Pinot Grigio.
The key word ultimately is balance and we have fine tuned the fruit load and canopy to what we feel the season will optimally ripen. That’s been done and the rest is now up to nature as the required dedication and hard work from our end is a given. With a few weeks of picking remaining and we’d like to see a continuation these beautiful cooler, but still relatively sunny days.
But we cannot control the weather, and nor would we want to. If we could dial in the ‘perfect’ weather, you would run the risk of destroying the essence of wine. We are farmers and nature is the ultimate winemaker defining the individual character, regionality and varietal typicity of any and every wine. With it’s absence excitement would leave wine for predictability. This would diminish passion and that’s something we certainly want in our wine.
Anyway for the weeks ahead we aim to keep you updated with less text but more photos as our Harvest progresses, but if you come up for cellar door you can see it for yourself!
Curly Flat Vineyard 